AFAICT from the Java end, ResultSet.close() is supposed to be final. There is no way I know of in JDBC to get a handle back to the cursor on the server side once you have made this call - in fact, its sole purpose is to inform the server in a timely fashion that this cursor is no longer required, since the ResultSet itself is a Java object and thus subject to garbage collection and finalizer hooks.
At a pragmatic level, the PGSQL JDBC driver has a lot of odd behaviours which, while they may or may not be in strict compliance with the letter of the standard, are very different from any other mainstream database that I have accessed from Java .... what I'd consider as normative behaviour, using regular JDBC calls without the need to jump through all these weird hoops, is exhibited by all of the following: Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, Apache Derby and JET (MS-Access file-based back end, the .mdb format)
In practce, this places PGSQL as the odd one out, which is a bit of a turn-off to expereinced Java people who are PG newbies for what is otherwise an excellent database.
At my current post, I came into a shop that had PG as the only real database, so I have learned to love it, and de-supported Derby and the other toy back ends we used to use. And to be fair, from a back end perspective, PG is better than MySQL in terms of manageability .... I am running 250GB databases on small systems with no issues.
At my previous shop, we built a couple of database-backed apps from scratch, and despite a desire to use PG due to there being more certainty over its future licensing (it was just after Sun had bought MySQL AG), I ended up switching from PG to MySQL 5.0.47 (last open source version) because of the difficulties I was having with the PG driver.
I consider part of the acme of great FOSS is to make it easy to use for newbies and thus attract a larger user base, but that is just my $0.02 worth.
Cheers
Dave
On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> I'd consider the fact that ResultSet.close() does not release the
> implicit cursor to be something of a bug
What's your reasoning on that? The definitions of cursors in the
spec, if memory serves, allow a cursor to be closed and re-opened;
why would this be treated differently?
-Kevin